Hear: Mumbai Metallers Festacorn’s Pummeling Debut EP ‘It’s Only Natural’

When you have as many twists and turns in your heavy music as Mumbai’s “sexy metal” band Festacorn, focus is key. Bassist Akhil Nargundkar says about their songwriting, “A common (unspoken) rule of thumb for us is to make sure that there’s always room for some crazy mosh-dancing.”

Their debut five-track EP, It’s Only Natural, is a culmination of about two years of playing, writing and rehearsing for Festacorn, who got playful with the name of a fictional Italian mob in a novel that Nargundkar was reading. There’s playfulness aplenty on It’s Only Natural, which was mixed by guitarist-engineer Prateek Rajagopal (from Brutal death metallers Gutslit and his own prog band The Minerva Conduct) and mastered by Germany’s Victor Bullok.

The songs range from modern prog (“Is Pepsea Ok?”), nu-metal (“Blox”), death metal (“Rainbows, Puppies and Unicorns”), alt-rock (“Laura’s Lesson,” cheeky in its name and groovy enough for the band to agree it’s their favorite to play live) and blues-goes-brutal “Laundry Day Blues”). Guitarist Angad Bhatia says of their EP closer, “The song has multiple vocal layers as metaphorically, it talks about multiple personality disorder. Vivek  [Jha, vocalist] has to execute all kinds of voices for it to happen. But none of the songs are impossible really. We try not to record what we can’t play live and vice versa.”

Apart from a listening party that marks the launch of their EP, the band says there’s more gigs in the works. Bhatia adds, “We started writing more material as soon as we had finished tracking for the EP, so I can confidently say we’re nowhere even close to being done. I think the plan is to write more music, play more shows and make people dance.”

 Festacorn performs at Blackblood on August 26th, 2018 at Above the Habitat, Mumbai. Event details here.